Debora Kuan holds degrees from Princeton University and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she was awarded a Graduate Merit Fellowship. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in American Letters & Commentary, Boston Review, Conduit, Crowd, Fence, Indiana Review, The Iowa Review, The L Magazine, Salt Hill, and elsewhere.
She has been awarded a Bread Loaf work-study scholarship, Fence/Summer Literary Seminars fellowship, and a Fulbright fellowship to Taiwan.
Presently, she writes and makes book art in Princeton, NJ.

Three Poems by Debora Kuan

Noc

Is that thing alive? I hear a famisht howl.
-John Berryman, Homage to Mistress Bradstreet

Hush.
Leaking.
We stopper the head with gum wads.

Warn or warm
what elfs one—
bring the brain about & wet it.

Turne

Now we are the headless mannequins. Plainly lain. C minor, autumnal, post-guillotine. We scratch each otherís necks.

Concavity as sympathy: the way a beggar shapes his hands. Or, I walk twenty days to meet a phantom pain: a chrome insistence beneath the brow, a steady soreness scrapes the bridge. Far ahead, a lamp-like face. It feigns surprise.

This is the other side of glass. A song, trapped in a snuffbox.

What replaces voice: pet cricket, tuning fork, zither placed upon a city wall. Our shoulders slump forward, our palms gesture upward. What has been renewed. Obedience of no nominal value: fermata held indefinitely.

Imagine a painted door. Owl eyes. A tiny blue egg
arranged on a ladder with other birdís eggs.
Rat bells, as in, You hear rat bells all along the wall.
It helps you. You get some sleep in the bathtub,
draw a horse-head with a soapy finger. It dissolves. Two sun streaks.
You are the maid-of-honor, you are the private equestrian.
What you like. Rained-out appointments. A tall carafe.
Card-games and hand-me-down sweaters.
Imagine a house packed with jacks. Dishes piled, a man-servant.
Snapshot. Your last journal entry reads: The Last Supper.
It wakes you. You want a floor to drag a doll over.
An armoire. A barrel of tar. The heaviest thing will do.

2

Imagine owl eyes, all along the wall. A colored egg
hidden in the fireplace. A sunburn. You step into a painted hole.
Mothballs, as in, A bee-shaped jewel you keep in mothballs.
It alarms you. You get some sleep in the dentistís chair, dream
of a pair of saints. They drag their feet. Two ice-cubes.
You are the state senator, you are the private doll-maker.
What you like. Apothecaries. Seven-layer cakes.
A set of flattened spoons. It helps you.
Imagine a fur shop packed with rats. A window dressing. An itch.
You switch cameras. Your first journal entry reads:Found a frozen blue jay on the front step today. It reminds you.
You want a sea to toss sandbags over. A door-stop
of catís-eye marbles. A dead motor. The steadiest thing will do.

Confessions of Porcelain Animals

From out of a sea-pipe or -groove, a child
smiles back. Its one lost eyelash
a miniature seascape (gull-swept wisp
and brine). We fasten its bonnet with new brass pins,
stuff acetaminophen
where its wind-up once was.